Theorizing from the Borders (Argentina & Russia)

Abstract

Border thinking or theorizing emerged from and as a response to the violence (frontiers) of imperial/territorial epistemology and the rhetoric of modernity (and globalization) of salvation that continues to be implemented on the assumption of the inferiority or devilish intentions of the Other and, therefore, continues to justify oppression and exploitation as well as eradication of the difference. Border thinking is the epistemology of the exteriority; that is, of the outside created from the inside; and as such, it is always a decolonial project. Recent immigration to the imperial sites of Europe and the USA-crossing the imperial and colonial differences-contributes to maintaining the conditions for border thinking that emerged from the very inception of modern imperial expansion. In this regard, critical border thinking displaces and subsumes Max Horkheimer’s ‘critical theory’ which was and still is grounded in the experience of European internal history (Horkheimer, 1937). ‘Critical border thinking’ instead is grounded in the experiences of the colonies and subaltern empires. Consequently, it provides the epistemology that was denied by imperial expansion. ‘Critical border thinking’ also denies the epistemic privilege of the humanities and the social sciences-the privilege of an observer that makes the rest of the world an object of observation (from Orientalism to Area Studies). It also moves away from the post-colonial toward the de-colonial, shifting to the geo-and body-politics of knowledge.